


Freak Show

by kormanine



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen, RotBTD, Steam Punk AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24758524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kormanine/pseuds/kormanine
Summary: A boy, born with a dysfunctional heart, obtains the heart of a dragon.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Jack Frost (Guardians of Childhood)
Kudos: 7





	1. one

When Valka would return from her daily shift at Ol' Grandfather Time--the city's clock tower--she'd find her son in the hallway, sitting on the carpeted floors with Toothless's head resting in his lap, a fixed staring contest between him and their own grandfather clock. The moment she'd question him, his eyes would flee and land on the rough red and gold carpet. Hesitant fingers would clutch the fabric of his own shirt, and he'd answer with a question: Why can't my heart keep a steady pace like the clock?

It's a question that would break the young woman's spirit in two, and the pieces would multiply as Hiccup continues, explaining with the tone of a scientist dealing with a failed experiment-he just can't understand such a faulty structure his body is fighting. This malfunctioning mechanism inside of him holds such a troubling contrast to the pinpoint precise clock that he begins comparing himself to it, this heartless machinery; it holds pride, elegance, strength, control.

(And a seemingly longer lifespan . . .)

As his fingers grow out of their infantile clumsiness, he begins conducting experiments at the age of five. He ventures to find his father's toolbox hidden in the closet-which is ridiculously heavy, so all he obtains are a few screwdrivers. He collects all the broken clocks from the backyard storage house, lays everything out on the kitchen table, and starts to tinker.

(Sooner or later he constructs a little carriage to wheel the entire toolbox to the kitchen; much more efficient.)

When Stoicks sees his son's focused eyes and the tip of his tongue sticking out from the side of his mouth in pure concentration, he thinks about the children outside, playing soccer and other sports. He knows his son is different, and his wife considers that a good thing. But he knows his son can't really do those things because of his dysfunctional heart, and wonders if that was the only thing preventing him from going outside and making friends. That, or he's simply just born that way.

♚

"By myself," Hiccup quickly adds when he requests to go for a walk.

Valka, bewildered by this condition, speaks through her motherly eyes.

"Hiccup, dear, I know it must be tiring to not go out on your own . . ."

"It's not--"

"But we really need to make sure you don't overwork yourself. It's dangerous for you to go outside alone."

"Please, I just--I need time to think. I can even have Toothless with me. He'll make sure I'm okay. And besides, you know how dad feels about Toothless inside the house."

With that, Toothless snuggles against Hiccup's side as the boy scratches behind his dragon's ear. Indeed, Toothless is such a troublesome dragon-always crawling through the cupboards and knocking things down, scratching the wallpaper and stuffing his head in the fridge, all the while looking innocent with his beady eyes and infant-like smile.

Stoick isn't the dragon-type, but his wife and son sure as hell . They are more than dragon lovers; they are experts. They're always studying, discovering, even reciting the many secrets every dragon has. And it helps Stoick when dealing with Toothless, but not dealing with Toothless altogether made everything all the more easygoing.

Valka sighs, seeing and believing the determination in her son's eyes. She looked at Toothless and gave in. "A little less than half an hour should be enough for a thinking walk, right?"

Hiccup gives her a dorky grin. As Toothless disappears from his side to fetch the boy's boots, Valka recites the precautions he has to take, and with each one he gives a felicitous bob of his head. He's getting the chance to walk by himself. Well, with Toothless of course, but that doesn't bother him at all. Toothless is always at his side no matter what.

He listens to her intently: make sure you're always near Toothless, don't wander too far into town, be back within the half hour in time for your appointment, and if you see your cousin--

Hiccup's brows furrow. "I'm having an appointment, today?"

His appointments were monthly, and he'd just had a checkup last week.

"The witches are visiting today."

He remembers the witches. They're the ones who really barged through the doors while Hiccup was having trouble breathing, right when his father was about to call the doctor. Whatever they had done-maybe a spell or enchantment-had worked, and he found himself breathing much better than ever before.

He remembers the witch with honey blonde hair and a headband with cat ears--Honey Lemon is what they had called her. She had smiled at him and told him something with one of the kindest voices he's ever heard:

" _La muerte tenía miedo de él porque tenía el corazón de un león_. Death was afraid of him because he had the heart of a lion."

He smiles at the thought of seeing her again. He can only wonder why they suddenly decided to visit, added to the fact that they actually called first.

♚

When he starts to feel even the slightest twinge in his chest, he has Toothless carry him on his back. It makes sense just to let Toothless carry him all the way around the loop of the mid-afternoon walk, but he feels the need to do it mostly himself, no help whatsoever. He couldn't tell you why he wants to walk by himself. Of course it's dangerous. But something in his dysfunctional heart is telling him to try. (In all honesty, he'd rather have the bloody thing work properly other than tell him things he doesn't understand.)

As the sun begins its departure from sky to horizon, he finds himself having walked to the town's public school. With the students long gone now, the deserted place with lonesome swing sets creaking in the wind, looked almost apocalyptic.

Wrapping his fingers around the bars of the black iron gate that set the perimeter, he rests his forehead against the gap between the bars (that thankfully isn't wide enough to fit his entire head) and imagines the hustle and bustle of social butterflies and everlasting friendships and party invitations and-- . . . a whole list of other things he might never experience again. (Not that his limited school experience was all that worthwhile.)

His parents had pulled him out of school only a few months into kindergarten. Sports had always been a bit irritating because, for one, his dad loves them. He'd visit the school to referee from time to time because he's happy around those who are hyperactive. Hiccup is the opposite. If he were able to play, he might try. For the short expanse he attended school, he'd go into the library and bury his nose into fantasies of warlocks and sorcerers. It always mesmerized him; these stories told about beings of magic and wonder, his imagination going beyond the limit of any shackled boy. Damn, what he would give to have a working heart.

He clutches the fabric of his shirt over his heart and loses himself to the daydream.

(If only . . .)

The roar of thunder cuts off his train of thought, and he looks up to the already darkened skies. He's never felt rain; hardly ever got the chance to, even if by accident. Images of pouring rain pelting against his window brings forbidden thoughts of what it possibly feels like; to be drenched by sky tears.

Would he be able to breathe? Would he care once he's felt it?

Toothless nudges his side, knowing that rain is a red flag. The reptilian companion is a protector, a friend. He knows at this time the boy is his responsibility. His parents-well, Valka, mostly-counted on the dragon to keep him safe.

Hiccup finds the yearning urge to know the unknown standing above all qualms. "Just this once."

Toothless gives him a look.

He rolls his eyes. "I'll--I'll make it up to them somehow . . . but this stupid organ is trying to tell me something. And who knows." He glances up at the sky, and just like that, he smiles a smile brighter than a thousand stars as his dysfunctional heart races in pure excitement. "Maybe something good will happen for once."

♚

"HICCUP!"

Valka's blood-curdling scream slices the air as Toothless bursts through the door with a spastic boy on his back, struggling to keep his hold of the dragon as he coughs blood into his sleeve.

Everyone is on their feet then. Elsa, one of the witches, quickly beckons everyone upstairs to the boy's bedroom.

Everything around him warps and contorts like some sort of alternate dimension. He hears voices, but they're muffled, growing distant, and he feels more sick thinking that he was getting farther and farther away from all the people he wanted to keep with him.

It's hard to dream of the future when death has him wrapped around its finger. But Hiccup has long since made the discovery that dreaming is a nice way to pass the time. He's always thought about playing sports and hiking up mountains with his dad, discovering secrets in the darkest corners of the world with his mom, and flying around the world with Toothless. But it's all out of his grasp. Like he was too short to ride the roller coaster of life.

Why must everything be so unattainable?

He thinks about it whilst eavesdropping on the muddle of background voices. He thinks about it as he's placed in his own bed, the skylight above him looking like a canvas of dusk. He thinks about it while the witches put him to sleep with a magical lullaby.

The answer to his question seems fairly simple: because he doesn't have the heart of a lion. He has the heart of a little dying boy.

♚

When Hiccup awakes to sunlight streaming through the skylight, he mistakes it for the infamous 'light' coming to claim his soul, his heart finally having given up. Then he feels the warmth of his mother's hand around his own, and knows he's still alive.

He figures that the soul leaves the body when time's up. Without a body, he wouldn't be able to feel, or use any of his senses. This idea is merely just another one of his death theories he's got listed in the back of his mind. He squeezes his mother's hand. He's going to miss that feeling.

He got lucky this time.

His throat feels like it's full of holes, and that bitter tang of blood still lingers in his mouth. His parents are sat by his bed, slumped over in the chairs they had fallen asleep in. His mother had her head tucked into her arm along the side of the bed. A smile came to his lips at his father's thunderous snoring. He's going to miss hearing that.

It only takes a few moments for Toothless to be right in his face, huge green eyes with enormously dilated pupils, his forked tongue out like a panting dog, smiling with just the gums of his mouth. His trademark toothless smile. He's going to miss seeing that.

"Hey, bud," he's able to croak out as the dragon nudges gently, affectionately at his cheek.

(He feels weak.)

There is a beeping contraption occupying his bed stand. It looks like a beam of light, simultaneously emitting an inconsistent beeping sound. Listening more closely, he realizes it matches up with his inconsistent heartbeat.

There are a few more moments with Toothless now curled up like a cat beside him as he stares at the beeping contraption (labeling it as a magical conjuring instead of a logical mechanism), then his tired eyes travel to the chair by the window, where a slightly awed Honey Lemon sits, blonde hair pinned up in a bun, a leather-bound book in her hands. She still has that headband with the cat ears . . . is it really just a headband? He tries to remember if they looked the same as before.

(Trying to remember hurts. The memories hurt.)

At the sight of his eyes, she places the book on the desk nearby that was scattered with charcoal drawings and small metal gadgets. With a push of her glasses, she stands up and walks to the side of the bed. Her lean build and platform high heels make her the tallest person he's ever met.

She sits along the side of the bed. Everything about her was kind and gentle. "How are you doing, Hiccup?"

He places a hand over his heart. "It's almost like it's not even there anymore."

A kind of guilty sadness dawns over Honey's face, her thin lips twisting like she was about to cry. Inhaling a single quivering breath, she turns to face the boy more, taking his hand in both of hers. "I am . . . so sorry, Hiccup. But you don't have much time left."

(That could have easily meant a month or two, a week, a day. But somehow he just knows: it's much less than that.)

It doesn't hit him as hard as he thought it would, and he feels bad for feeling like he could almost shrug it off. Never seeing his parents again, never seeing Toothless again, all of those things he feels like he should cry over. But he doesn't, and embraces what he's been waiting for.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is going to die.

Honey clutches his shoulder, but is unable to look him in the eye. They probably feel unrighteous that they couldn't save me, he thinks. Maybe I'm just not meant to be saved.

So, he smiles a small smile. " _Está bien_ , Honey. This isn't your fault."

It's a sort of nice, yet heavy feeling to see her face break into a smile, and she's able to look at him, eyes still sad. She leans back then, letting out the most gentle laugh he's ever heard. "You've been practicing?"

Hiccup nods proudly. "Ever since you told me that saying, I've been teaching myself. _El español es un idioma muy bonito. Me gusta mucho_."

" _Muy bien_ , Hiccup!" Honey gushes with a small applause, to which Hiccup beams. "You're such a bright boy."

He shrugs modestly, smiling. "Thanks, Honey."

Honey's eyes--sadness still within them--cast down to her lap, the smile on her lips still there, but barely.

"It was raining." he says suddenly, his voice a whisper. "I felt rain today."

Realization dawns upon Honey's face. "Hiccup--"

"I know," he says, like he should've known, but didn't "I know. I felt the rain, I let it wash away the fear, and I let myself run through it for the few seconds that I could."

(Things around him start going gray like the tv screen he would spend hours in front of. There was hardly anything else he could do after all.)

"I wasn't thinking. Or . . . maybe I was, but didn't care. Maybe I knew this would happen and thought I should experience it at least once. Maybe I caused this and brought doom into a hug just to accept that I'd always have it close to me. Maybe I wished to make up for what my father didn't have and always wanted. Maybe I yearned to have the freedom my mother always felt through life. Maybe I wanted Toothless by my side like any other partner in crime. Maybe that was my last wish on this Earth along with every other wish I've wished for through my little fleck of life. Maybe I have this fatal curiosity and wish upon dead stars and have finally come to an understanding with fate . . . Maybe."

(Done. Over. Finished. Roll credits. He's done he's done he's done.)

Honey Lemon stares at him, and he can't see the pain stricken shock behind the restricted surprise. After a moment, she swallows, the muscles in her jaw tightening, her soft eyes solidifying, looking back at him with the most serious face she's ever worn around him. She mumbles something he can't hear because everything is muffled.

"What?"

Her voice-he recognizes her tone. It's the same tone when she told him about lions and death and fear. "Don't give up, Hiccup. Not just yet. Not with that lion still inside of you."

He remembers the raindrops, like little shots of ice against his skin. He remembers watching his hands as he cupped them together, letting the water pool into his palms, eventually dripping off his hair, his barely-visible reflection contorting with each mini splash.

It was cold, and he'd been shivering, but nevertheless, he would describe sky tears to be exhilarating.

Eventually, all he can see is the ceiling, and as he stares through the glass of the skylight, he thinks about the glass of a coffin.

He can't hear anything. Figures seem to crowd him, their faces blurred. But, he does witness the bright green of sad dragon eyes disrupting his sight like a promise.

And everything just . . . fades.

  
  



	2. two

He wakes up from death when it's morning. How many mornings have passed before this one--it's hard to tell.

Returning from death is not a very pleasant experience--there's a buzzing in his brain, like a swarm of bees in his skull. It ripples through his body, making him feel fuzzy underneath his own skin.

It's quiet and cold, the air musty and damp, and the darkness is so dense that his senses grow numb. Something does seem to be buzzing around his head, though, and it's not pain. He swats his hand through the air in realization to the flies, then recoils when his hand smacks against a surface much too close to him. The contact sends tingles through his arm, and he sets his hands on either side of him, meeting even more of the surface. He's inside something.

He feels his hands along the surface even more, seeing how far it extends, if there's any kind of opening at all. With a little more force--(tingles rush down his arms)--he finds the surface opens like a door in front of him, and he pushes until light breaks through, until it flips up like a book cover and opens.

He sits up, his head slightly spinning, and he recognizes nothing.

(Although, not everyone would recognize a place of fog and coffins.)

Behind him, someone hops from one coffin to another, his steps perfectly silent as the wind eases his movements, and he stops when he's perched upon a coffin laying on its side directly behind the undead boy. He peers at the back of his head, filing through the many names he knows, of those who've recently passed.

"You weren't dead for quite long, now were you?" he thinks aloud.

Hiccup is startled, but before he could turn completely to see who was behind him, the newcomer floats above his head to see him. He's upside down, snow white hair falling from his forehead, suspended in the air as if he were dangling off a string like bait from a hook.

Hiccup's eyes are still struggling to register the grey light around them, colour slowly leaking into his vision, and the surprise from this sudden presence causes him to pull his hands to his chest. It startles him how cold his own hands are.

"Who are you?" Hiccup's voice sounds strangely quiet, and his throat feels dry and unused.

The floating boy cartwheels his legs over so he ends up tiptoeing along another coffin, holding his staff against the back of his neck as it rests upon both of his shoulders. "I'm the undertaker," he introduces, his back to the freckled boy, his brown cloak floating to a breeze that surrounds only him. "And I wasn't really told what to do when the dead start rising, so bare with me for a moment."

Hiccup rubs his throat, but it makes him feel like he's choking on ice. "Where am I?"

"Cliffside," the snow haired boy tells him, swinging his staff in an underhand motion as he turns, the wind following his movements. "Where bodies are dumped."

Hiccup looks around as the wind sweeps away the fog, revealing many more coffins than he would've been comfortable with, all with frost growing through the veins of the wood and sealed with nails of ice. For a boy who has grown up with death on his shoulder, he's never been surrounded by it to this degree. The stench of rot and decay is like nothing he's ever experienced.

Hiccup stares down at his too-cold hands. They look dull, almost grey. "I really died," he whispers to himself.

"Not really, actually," the undertaker comments, which earns him an incredulous look from the boy in the coffin. "Just being optimistic for the moment."

"Mom and dad must think I'm dead!" Hiccup exclaims, hands raking through his hair. "But I'm  _ not _ !"

"Clearly."

"I have to tell them!"

"I wouldn't." The undertaker perches himself on the far end of Hiccup's coffin. "You already had your funeral. They saw your dead body in an open casket. To them, you're six feet under by now."

Hiccup narrows his eyes. "How do you know that?"

"Because I'm the undertaker. I know about dead people. I know your name's Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, and that your cause of death was a malfunctioning heart."

Hiccup sighs in frustration, clutching the fabric of his shirt. "It's all this stupid thing's fault," he growls in resentful regards to the organ in his chest. He should've never listened to it.

The undertaker flips his staff in his hands. "Move your hand," he tells him. Hiccup is hesitant before he lets his arm fall, watching the other boy suspiciously as he nears the crook of his staff towards Hiccup.

When the staff meets his shirt, a blue glow seeps through the wood, casting odd fractures of light through the fog, breaking it apart, slipping through like a dragon's flame through its teeth.

"Doesn't seem like the same stupid thing to me," says the undertaker, pulling the staff away, the glow lingering beneath Hiccup's shirt. "Your heart seems perfectly . . .  _ capable _ , to say the least."

Hiccup realizes how much he doesn't know in that moment, because the glowing staff fascinates him, but the words he's saying don't quite do the same, as he's almost suggesting Hiccup has a  _ different _ heart . . . he doesn't know this place, his parents think he's  _ dead _ , he's  _ not _ dead . . .

"I need to know where my parents are," Hiccup states firmly.

The undertaker furrows his brows. "Why?"

Hiccup feels the beginnings of frustration settle in his cheeks. "Wh-What do you mean  _ why _ ? They're my  _ parents _ ."

"You may be breathing, Hiccup, but, technically—"

"I'm not 'technically' anything! I'm  _ alive _ !"

Blue eyes assess him, a slight tightness in his jaw as his Shepherd's staff returns to its spot against his shoulder. Something about those blue eyes unnerved Hiccup, and a twinge in his chest seems to be validating that feeling. It's strange to have someone you never met know how you died, then look at you as if you were nothing but a window pane.

The undertaker lets out a heavy, resigned sigh, shaking his head as if this were a mistake--whether it was his or Hiccup's, well, it's too early to tell. "Alright," he announces. "I can take you to them."

Hiccup blinks and pauses. "Really?" he asks quietly, unsure.

A grin graces the undertaker's pale, ghostly face. "Are you planning on staying in that coffin for the rest of your life?" the undertaker asks back cheekily.

Hiccup stands at that. He's never known the world too well, but the last thing he's expecting it to be would be easy. "You're seriously helping me?"

"Certainly can't lay you to rest, now can I?" He hops and pirouettes among the caskets like a snowflake. "Let's go, before you wake up the others. I'm sure everyone besides you is  _ actually _ trying to sleep."

  
  



End file.
